Editorial: A bad look for Thousand Oaks

Sometimes the Thousand Oaks City Council reminds us of our president. It will take an important step with potential for much community benefit, but the drama surrounding it is not a good look for the city.

The council didn’t have much choice, under a new state law designed to help ease California’s housing shortage. So you would have thought council members would just endorse this modest, relatively painless measure and move on. Instead, they spent most of the May 30 two-hour hearing on the measure whining about the loss of local control and raising sky-is-falling fears about parking and other problems.

“I’m sure our Legislature thought they were acting in good faith, but I really don’t think this is going to ... solve the housing problem here in Thousand Oaks or even in the state,” Councilman Andy Fox said. “It is … almost guaranteed to cause a lot of problems that we are not really going to have the ability to address.” And this from Mayor Claudia Bill-de la Peña: “I see this as a can of worms. It’s going to cause friction. It’s going to cause tension. And I’m not looking forward to that.”

We didn’t realize the mayor’s job was supposed to be stress-free, but that’s beside the point. Fox is right to say granny flats won’t solve our housing shortage, but there is simply no data that they will destroy neighborhoods, either.

We were especially disappointed with Councilman Al Adam, who campaigned last year on providing housing for seniors and millennials — two groups that could benefit the most from granny flats. Yet he joined the whining May 30, saying, “I think it’s the duty as a council to protect the nature of our neighborhoods.”

First, granny flats are expensive to build. Most homeowners do not want to build one, and cities can still enforce building and health and safety codes. Portland, a national leader in accessory dwelling units after easing its rules and fees in 2010, has granny flats on only about 1 percent of its single-family residential properties.

Martin John Brown, a researcher and consultant on environment and housing who has studied the Portland data, says there is “zero objective evidence supporting two specific fears often mentioned by ADU opponents: parking problems and declines in property values.”

“Each individual ADU is only a tiny change that can have little effect on neighborhood conditions,” he posted on accessorydwellings.org. “But over decades an accumulation of ADUs probably would notably change the character and demographics of a place. But can any neighborhood really be held in an unchanging state? … Hundreds of permitted ADUs have been created (in Portland) and there has been practically no reaction on a neighborhood basis — sometimes the new developments are hardly noticed. Meanwhile, an alternative form of densification, the transit-oriented apartment block, has caused a lot of protest.”

The people who would notice granny flats are the existing Thousand Oaks residents who need to provide housing for an aging parent or a caretaker or a nanny or a college graduate returning home. Or those struggling a bit financially who could use the extra rent money to help cover their mortgage and property taxes. Are they not represented by the Thousand Oaks City Council as well?

The modern household is not the bread-winning dad, stay-at-home mom and 2.5 kids anymore, Dana Cuff, the founding director of the CityLab think tank at UCLA, told Business Insider in March. “There's just an infinite number of ways our housing should be made more flexible for our complete lives,” she said, and ADUs “get the ball rolling.” Granny flats also can help combat climate change and reduce traffic congestion by giving workers a chance to live closer to their jobs, officials say.

Under the new state rules, cities can still regulate granny flats in various ways, including size and exterior design. While the state law allows them to be as large as 1,200 square feet, Thousand Oaks set a maximum of 600 square feet.

Residents of Thousand Oaks and elsewhere in Ventura County have rejected urban sprawl by voting for Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources laws. In already-developed areas, they have opposed apartment projects, mixed-use proposals, assisted-living centers, even housing for veterans who have served this country.

It is time for all of our city councils to reject this zero-growth swamp. Leading the charge for granny flats is a good place to start.